Making of the movies

Writing a book is the easy part.

A harder part is getting a publisher. My first book was rejected over 40 times and that was after wining an award for unpublished novels. I only half joke that the postal service bribed my publisher because they were tired of lugging the manuscript around. That was back in the pre-email days.

The marketing is the hardest part. Even good reviews is no guarantee that bookstores will stock a writer. The myth of limousine-five star hotel book tours is just that a myth unless you are major-major-major author with a household name. Being in Europe makes arranging my own US tour impractical.

Let's make a movie

Besides writing every independent bookstore in the US and pleading with them to put a copy or two on their shelves, having a website, Rick thought by making a video of me reading from the novels against a proper backdrop might be a good marketing tool like a trailer for a movie.

Thus over the past few months we've been recording in the appropriate places. He is in various stages of doing the finished products.

We just posted the reading for Murder on Insel Poel on my website and youtube. Please, if you have time, take a look. It's 3 minutes 37 seconds.

Since Annie finds the murder victims on the beach, we needed a beach. Driving to Insel Poel, some 16 hours away seemed a bit much, when a local beach looked very much like the one on the island. I guess you would call that a spoiler alert.

Thus on a windy day in March we found this stretch between Argelès and Canet. I took off my coat and didn't come down with pneumonia.

We'd forgotten the microphone but decided to go ahead anyway.

The selection of what to read is always a challenge. I started out with the section where Hilke feels she's is born to the wrong family and why and did a second part where Roger tells Annie, once again, "Don't get involved." Of course if Annie didn't, there would be no story.

The wind caused a problem but now the beach is covered with people on blankets, playing volley ball and making sand castles so reshooting would mean a delay until autumn when people returned to their homes in Paris, Copenhagen, Stuttgart, etc.

I love Rick's ability to ferret out technical solutions. He came up with a software that minimizes the wind and maximizes my voice. I admit to having a technical patience of less than a nano second, but he spent hours making sure everything was in sync.

Both of us searched for photos to relieve the monotony of me. Fortunately I had several from my research trips.

We didn't add any of the concentration camp where Hilke was interred during WWII.

We did put up a map of the island.

Some say it looks like a gorilla. Others see it as a lobster claw.

I don't know how he selects the music for the background but I love his choice.

When we did the earlier one for Murder in Geneva we were really on the scene of the action. It's easy because I live around the corner. 

We've shot for Murder in Paris at the abbey Fontfroide and plan to finish shooting in Paris our next trip there hopefully in September.

My editor who listened to the evideo asked, "Can Rick do something about your Boston accent? JUST JOKING" I don't think Rick can find any software to put Rs into words in place of Hs.